She paced restlessly, agitated by the cold and the situation she had found herself in. She was searching Manhattan for a man with an apparent alias. She had really fallen this time, fallen good. This was not rising into anything.
She turned and started back the way she’d come, and when Sullivan appeared from the entranceway she hurried towards him.
He was shaking his head even before he spoke. ‘Doesn’t know a thing. Even fifty dollars and he doesn’t know a thing. He was more concerned that I might be from Rent Control or something.’
‘Did he tell you the name the apartment was taken in?’
Sullivan looked at Annie. There was something in his expression that said all he needed to say.
‘Well?’
‘David O’Neill,’ Sullivan said, and looked down.
‘David O’Neill?’ Annie asked, incredulous. ‘You gotta be kidding Jack.’
‘No, that was the name he used. David O’Neill.’ He came down the steps and stood facing her on the sidewalk. ‘Now tell me there isn’t something weird going on.’
‘Coincidence,’ Annie said, and even as she said it she knew she was fooling herself.
Sullivan smiled, attempting perhaps to be sympathetic. ‘And coincidence is what?’
‘Bullshit,’ Annie said, burying her hands in her coat pockets and sighing. ‘Why?’ she said, asking herself just as much as she was asking Sullivan.
‘Who knows?’
‘David Quinn, or O’Neill or whoever the fuck he is, that’s who,’ Annie said.
Sullivan started walking.
Annie stood for a moment, lost in her own thoughts, and then hurried to catch up with him. She put her arm through Sullivan’s, and looking at them from the other side of the street they could have been a couple, perhaps a father and daughter, taking a walk, sharing time with one another. They did not speak, did not even look at one another, and three blocks down Sullivan stopped outside a coffee shop and suggested they go inside.
‘He did this thing about trust,’ Annie said once they were seated.
‘Trust?’ Sullivan asked.
‘When I went to his apartment he did this thing where he blindfolded me and told me to sit on a chair and do nothing for a minute.’
Sullivan frowned.
‘He was talking about trust, about how everyone had learned not to trust anyone, that everyone suspected everyone else’s ulterior motives and vested interests, and then he told me he was going to ask me to trust him.’
‘And he blindfolded you?’
Annie nodded. ‘Blindfolded me and told me to sit still and say nothing for a minute and I had to trust him, that he would do something or other and I just had to trust him.’
‘And you did it?’
‘I did … but only for thirty-seven seconds. I couldn’t handle it, it was nerve-wracking. You sit there for a minute in complete silence and darkness, trying to figure out what someone might be doing, where they might be from the sound of their breathing, and it really is very disconcerting.’
‘And what did he do?’
‘Well, he didn’t strip naked and stand there with a butcher’s knife and a hard-on.’
Sullivan laughed suddenly, spilled some coffee on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Well shit Annie, what a disappointment that must have been for you.’
She smiled, took a napkin and mopped the edge of Sullivan’s sleeve.
‘No, for real … what did he do in those thirty-seven seconds?’ Sullivan asked.
Annie shook her head. ‘He did nothing … absolutely nothing. He just sat there watching me.’
‘Just sat and watched you?’
‘Yes, that was it. And that was the whole point of the thing. He was basically trying to tell me that whatever I might fear was merely my imagination, that I would sit there and conjure up the worst possible thing, and that my fears were whatever I created.’
Sullivan was nodding his head.
‘That was the thing Jack … that was part of the whole thing, whatever game he was playing to make me think he could be trusted.’
‘And you trusted him?’
‘I did … trusted him enough to let him take me to Boston, to not pressure him for a telephone number or an address. I think about it now and I actually don’t know the first thing about him.’
‘So what did you talk about when you were together?’
‘We didn’t do one helluva lot of talking,’ Annie said. ‘There were more important things going on most of the time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sullivan said, his voice quiet, tender almost.
‘Sorry? For what?’
‘That he was an asshole.’
‘I don’t know for sure that he was an asshole Jack … Christ, I don’t know anything right now. Seems to me there could just as easily be a perfectly rational explanation for everything that’s happened.’
‘Like really he was a CIA sleeper living under nine different aliases, and the terrorist cell he was trying to infiltrate got wind of who he was and so he disappeared in order to ensure that no harm came to you?’
‘As good as any other explanation I’ve got,’ Annie said.
‘You just don’t want to face the fact that he was as spineless and immature as the vast majority of men in this city, that it all got a little too close for comfort and he ran for cover before you suggested getting married or something like that.’
Annie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to face that possibility Jack …’
Sullivan closed his hand over hers. ‘I didn’t mean that … that wasn’t necessary.’
‘Sometimes the truth has a way of finding you whether you want it to or not,’ Annie said. ‘Christ, what I would give for a cigarette.’
‘You don’t smoke,’ Sullivan said.
‘I can start, can’t I?’
‘You start smoking and I’ll start drinking again,’ he said. He edged his chair back and started to rise. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home, watch some dreadful crap on the tube and eat a quart of Ben and Jerry’s between us.’
Annie smiled as best she could and rose from the table. She put on her coat, buttoned it, tugged the collar up around her throat, and in leaving the coffee shop she took Sullivan’s arm once more.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
He turned, frowned. ‘For what?’
‘For being there,’ she said. ‘Just for being there.’
Annie O’Neill wondered if there could ever be anything good about losing. She thought of the Joni Mitchell line –
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone
– but she didn’t necessarily agree. She’d had David, at least believed she had, and now he was gone. When he’d been there it had been good, and she had known what it was. It was the start of something, and she’d imagined what that something could have become. Even in Boston, spending those hours alone in a strange hotel room, it hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as it might have been because she’d known he was coming back. It was not that she craved company, she believed herself neither insecure nor lacking independence; it was simply that two was better than one. Two was definitely better than one.
In silence she watched a movie with Jack Sullivan. She watched it but paid no attention to what the actors were saying to each other. When it was finished, she could not have told anyone what the movie was called, or who was in it, or what it was about. It was meaningless, because all that mattered to her at that moment were the thoughts inside her head, the feelings in her heart. Her heart was not broken; it was strained. Something had pulled it too far in the wrong direction, and the healing process had not yet begun. Healing needed time, it involved crying sometimes, and waking in the small hours of the morning and asking questions that had no answer. And slowly the healing would do its work; and though it always took longer than you wanted, and though there would be moments in the weeks and months to come when she would be somewhere else entirely – a shopping mall or a
vegetable market, her mind considering such things as salad with avocado or parmesan – and though David Quinn would be the furthest thing away … even at times like that there would still be moments when she would hear a name, catch a scent, perhaps see something on a shelf that would remind her, and in that split-second heartbeat realize that the healing was not yet done.
Thanksgiving would be tough, Christmas in some ways tougher, but by then more time would have elapsed and, who knows, she might even be in another doomed relationship.
She smiled to herself, a smile of contemplation, of something vaguely nostalgic.
‘What is it?’ Sullivan asked.
She turned to face him. They were seated side by side on her couch, Annie with her legs tucked beneath her, Jack slouched back with his heels on the coffee table.
‘Relationships suck,’ she said quietly.
‘Sometimes they do, and sometimes having no relationship sucks more,’ he said.
‘But we always recover … apparently we always recover.’
Sullivan nodded. ‘Never ceases to amaze me the amount of crap that a human being can tolerate and still come out the other side somewhat sane.’
‘Don’t know that anyone’s actually ever really sane,’ Annie said. ‘I think everyone’s crazy to some extent.’
‘But David Quinn has to be the craziest.’
Annie nodded. ‘Most definitely … David Quinn has to be the craziest of them all.’ She leaned sideways until her head rested on Sullivan’s shoulder.
He put his arm around her and pulled her close.
‘You wanna keep looking?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ll sleep on it, see how I feel tomorrow.’
‘You can’t let something like this stop you living life, you know?’
‘I know … but I think I’ve come to a point where I’ve had enough.’
‘Enough? Enough of what?’
Annie sighed. ‘Enough of doing the same thing day in, day out Jack. Enough of the store, of the stocks and inventories, of battered paperback books that I’m sure no-one ever reads.’ She looked up at him. ‘You know what I think?’
‘What?’
‘I think that they buy books to take home and put in a bookcase so people will think that they’re cultured and academic and well read.’
‘That’s a very cynical attitude.’
‘I have a right to be cynical tonight … at least allow me that much.’
‘So what will you do then? Sell the place? Move?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know … I really don’t know what I’ll do. More than likely piss and moan about it for a few days and then go back to the same old routine.’
‘It won’t ever be the same routine Annie. Something like this happens and you always end up seeing things from another point of view. That much difference at least.’
‘But not enough,’ she said. ‘Never different enough.’
‘Maybe we could move together … a different city, go out to Vegas or something.’
‘Sell the store, take all the money and blow it on the blackjack tables. Stay a week in the presidential suite, and then when the money’s all gone we could sleep rough in bus shelters and drink Thunderbird wine out of brown paper bags until we die of liver failure.’
‘Sounds good.’
Annie closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
‘I’m going home,’ Sullivan said. ‘You get some sleep … we’ll talk in the morning.’
‘Sure,’ she said.
Sullivan eased away from her and got up. He leaned forward
and kissed her forehead, touched her face, smiled, and walked towards the door.
‘Sleep tight,’ he said.
‘Make sure the bugs don’t bite,’ she replied.
Sullivan left the room and closed the door gently behind him.
Annie lay for a while on the couch before going through to her bedroom. She couldn’t be bothered with showering or brushing her teeth; she stripped off her clothes, lay down and pulled the covers over herself.
She lay awake for some time, at one point turning to glance at the clock and then, reaching for it, she turned its face away from her. Time was all she possessed right now, and it was not something she needed to measure.
There are these moments, she thought, when it all seems so meaningless. Moments when everything you have done, everything you believe you’ve worked towards comes to nothing. How shallow can it all be? How many lives are spent waiting for something to happen, only to end with nothing happening at all? There must be a hundred million people out there feeling what I’m feeling now. Hollow. Inconsequential. And yet all of us felt at some point that there was something out there for us, that one day it would all come right, that there would be a perfect day when everything started to turn around
…
She buried her face in the pillow and closed her eyes. She could feel moisture behind her lids.
Don’t cry Annie, she thought. Crying serves no purpose. You can just lie here and cry yourself to sleep or you can start to plan how you’re gonna get yourself out of this hole and make something happen for yourself. Two months’ time and you’ll be thirty-one, and there isn’t anyone gonna come along and hold your hand, tell you it’s all gonna be okay and make everything right. That shit doesn’t happen. In Hollywood maybe, but not down here in Morningside Park, Manhattan. This is life. Real life. It has sharp corners and rough edges, and sometimes you collide with them and you break bones and bloody your nose and bruise real easy. And what
d’you do then? Well, that depends on who you are. If you’re a victim of circumstance you lie right where you fell, and you just keep on lying there hoping that the noise will stop. If you’re a survivor … well, if you’re a survivor you survive
.
Are you a survivor Annie O’Neill? Are you?
She hugged the pillow tighter, felt the warmth of her body seeping into the mattress, felt the weight of her thoughts as they tugged her down into sleep.
Just sleep a while Annie … maybe when you wake up the world will be a different place. Has to be a different place. Can’t take much more of it the way it is. No … can’t take much more the way it is
.
And then she slept, and as she slept the rain started falling, and from the window of her apartment you would have seen a hundred thousand streetlights reflected along wet streets and boulevards and avenues.
And maybe, somewhere out there, someone was thinking of Annie O’Neill and what tomorrow would bring.
An hour or two later, she woke once again. And she cried. And though she cried for David Quinn, or whoever she might have believed was David Quinn, she cried more for herself. She cried for her loneliness, her loss, for many reasons. And she cried for her father. Frank O’Neill. She touched his wristwatch, watched the sweep-hand slowly devour its metronomic seconds, and then she searched out
Breathing Space
, and with her finger she traced the words he had written inside the cover.
Annie, for when the time comes. Dad. 2 June 1979
.